WALTHAM, Mass. -- Boston Celtics president of basketball operations Danny Ainge showed up for his end-of-the-season news conference Wednesday wearing a pullover with the insignia of Old Sandwich Golf Club, one his favorite courses about 40 miles south of Boston. If Ainge is to sneak in many rounds there over the next few months, he's going to have to get creative with his time.

The Celtics, with hopes of a franchise-altering summer, launched full steam into pre-draft workouts this week at the team's training facility. Boston's front office values the opportunity to bring in potential draftees to evaluate everything from their measurements to their personality to how they perform in the team's preferred drills.

Boston's practice facility is typically bustling with the activity of pre-draft visits in May and June, but this year should be even busier. Armed with eight draft picks -- a ridiculous 13.3 percent of the 60-pick NBA draft -- Boston has both rounds of June's pick-a-palooza canvassed and, with a little help from the pingpong balls on May 17, could be able to get an up-close glimpse at just about every major prospect.

This is no small advantage. Last year, the Celtics had two first-round picks -- Nos. 16 and 28 -- but struggled to get top candidates to visit. Boston's front office lamented how, with 20 draftees who believed they were destined to go in the top 10, much of last year's top talent didn't come in for a workout. This despite the fact that Boston had the necessary assets to maneuver into the top 10 (the draft pick-shunning Charlotte Hornets and their staunch desire to select Frank Kaminsky, not withstanding).

The Celtics are hopeful that their pick from the Brooklyn Nets, which has the third-best odds of vaulting to No. 1, will fetch a top spot in May's lottery. That would afford Boston an opportunity to investigate all the top players in the draft. But even if that Brooklyn pick lands a bit lower, the Celtics will still have five picks in the top 35 selections. Regardless of whether Ainge elects to take multiple swings of the bat (keeping with the golf theme, he joked he has "eight mulligans" this year) or maneuver around the board to target those prospects that most intrigue the Celtics, Boston essentially has to be ready to pick at any spot.

While many of the players that wandered through the team's practice facility this week were second-round hopefuls at best, Ainge enjoys the pre-draft process after studying these players throughout their college careers.

"This is always a fun time, just to get to know so many players," said Ainge. "I think this year is a really unique opportunity for us to get to interview and spend time with and have workouts with so many different players.

"Often when you’re in the middle or latter part of the first round, you don't get to evaluate fully the top players in the draft. But with eight picks in this year's draft, we have a full range of players that we'll have an opportunity to see. So our draft workouts will be much busier this year than ever before."

What's more, the NCAA extended its deadline for underclassmen to remove their name from the draft, shuffling to May 25 this year, which might allow the Celtics to evaluate an even larger than usual pool of players. While Ainge couldn't put an exact number on how many draft hopefuls the team will ultimately bring through, he summed it up by simply saying, "A lot."

How is the talent in this year's draft overall?

"It's always deep. I think the challenge is always finding the ones that separate themselves," said Ainge. "But there's a lot of kids that are on the bubble of making it or not making it in the NBA. So we’re looking for guys that are a fit for what we need, a fit for how we play, and for those players that have a chance to be special."

The Celtics have glaring needs for size and shooting, but Ainge has stressed throughout his tenure that the team will not allow immediate needs to deter it from targeting the best players available.

"Everybody wants size, quality size, which is really hard to find. Everybody needs shooting. Those are things that we're always looking to improve on," said Ainge. "And toughness and character and length and speed. What else? All the other characteristics of the great players.

"But usually you don't find all those in one. Like [Tuesday] we had a workout where, if you put all of those players together, you’d have a top-5 pick. We had a tough kid, a great shooter, and great size, all in the same workout -- just mixed into a few different players."

Ainge wasn't tipping his hand about what the team thinks of the players projected to be among the top picks in this year's draft like Ben Simmons and Brandon Ingram.

"[The talent is] good, but we haven’t really seen it yet. I mean, we've seen [the top players] as [college] freshmen, but I think that there's a lot of change that happens between now and the draft or from when the college season ends in March to the draft also, especially with the young kids," said Ainge. "So there will be a lot of young kids at the top of this draft and so I think it's too early to evaluate. I think that we have a tendency to be more critical of kids and say they’re not this or they’re not that. And then we see them two years later in the All-Star game. So I'll reserve judgment on that for now and look forward to the opportunity of meeting the kids at the top of the draft."